Glad I'm not a bank teller

The guide for new parents is almost done. I should be able to meet my self-imposed deadline and have it online by mid-February.
Life has just become so much work for me. I know I complain a lot. That's my charm.
Every night I try and squeak in an hour of writing. I don't always succeed. Right now my priority is the guide. Before it was the former Virus book. I don't have much more than three or four hours a week to write.
It makes me very frustrated that I don't have more time but I don't know where I'd get it. It's 8:30 p.m. and I've just sat down at the computer.
Now it's 8:35 p.m. and I've just returned from upstairs searching for the origins of a huge crash noise.  I was a little freaked after searching every room and finding nothing. My husband discovered a shampoo bottle fell off a shelf in the family bathroom. We must have a ghost because no one was in that room moving around.

So, I'm going to cut this short because I'm writing the guide.When I'm having a crisis of confidence I wonder if I'm wasting my time. I guess I'll know in a few months.
I hope that folks will take a chance on my stories and enjoy them.
That brings me to my assignment today. I don't talk much about work. That's another reason why I don't feel like writing because I do it every day for work.
Anyway, I covered a couple of Criminal Injuries Compensation Board hearings.
The first one was a guy who got stabbed. The second one was profound. It was a woman who had worked at a bank for 35 years. She - TWICE - was the teller on duty when the bank was robbed. The first robbery was violent with men in masks with guns.
The second one was a man with a knife.
The woman is now a mess. I almost cried during the hearing. She suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome, depression, anxiety and is really struggling to live a normal life. She hasn't been able to go back to being a teller because she's afraid of dealing with the public. Who can blame her?
I have covered several bank robberies in my career and I always wondered what happens to the tellers. Well, now I know.

Revisions bogging me down

I am making major revisions to my book. After re-reading the book several times, I couldn't get over the fact that one of the male lead characters was so unappealing I had to get rid of him.

So, I've spent some time thinking about what kind of guy I want him to be and have started the revisions. I'll be re posting a new first two chapters soon.

This is one of the things I so dislike about writing. It can be such a slog and so much work.
I do a lot of whining in this space. So I shall finish on a positive note.

With the changes I'm going to make, I think it will drastically improve the book and the romance element.

See you soon.

Survival guide coming out in February for new parents

Because I secretly have ADD (not) I am putting out a survival guide for new parents in February.
I'm doing this before I forget all the wonderful tips I learned or were passed on to me before I had my now 3 1/2 year old.
I'll be publishing it as an e-book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. I'm thinking of pricing it at $1.49. It will only be about 50-pages full of useful information.
This is not a booklet repeating all the information already out there. It's interesting that you can read a ton of books before you have your baby and yet still know nothing!!!
I mean, did you know there were sleeper swaddling sacks with Velcro arms that are super easy substitutes for doing that incredibly complicated wrap to keep your kid swaddled? Did you know that Mylicon is one of the only essential must have you need beside diapers and wipes?
If you learned anything, you'll want to check out the booklet. I also have a section on all the useless crap they sell you at big box baby stores that you don't need.
In these hard times, the only thing you have to buy brand new is a bucket car seat and that's only if you can't borrow one.
For more check out the tab and online book stores in February.

Happy New Year

I hope everyone has great plans for the upcoming year.
Regretfully, it will be a struggle to get the book done by January. Although it's complete I've had some revelations about the rewriting. I don't plan to change plot but would like the words to flow better.
I got the idea from Justin Cronin's The Passage. I like his writing. I'm on Chapter 8 of the book and it drags a bit because it's laden with scene setup and lots of description but he makes the words flow. I'm finding the book a little perplexing right now but I admire the writing.

I'm also a bit tied down with family crisis. My father is in the hospital and I'm finding it very distracting. I have already travelled to Toronto once and might go again in the next few days. I will get this book finished and published over the next month or so. I'm setting a goal and I'll make it work. It's just going to be a struggle. I guess I'll have to start treating it like half-marathon training and reserve several nights a week to rewriting.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great holidays. I plan to perk up when I can.

I've got to change the title of my book. Virus just doesn't do it for me.
It makes me think of a Michael Crichton book. My book is not about the science of the virus nor about it as a medical device. It's more about what it does, who released it and why.
The virus is just a device to get me where I want to be.
I have never liked Virus as a title and always leaned toward other more accurate phrases like Polluted Blood. That title brings to mind a medical Stephen King, which the story isn't either.
There is nothing medical in the book. In fact there isn't a doctor to be found.
Its' a story of survival, friendship, family. The series is to be called Remakables.
Need title ideas.....

Book release delayed

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time or enough sleep to finish the edits yet. Soon. I've had a rough two weeks and took time off when I did have some free moments.
I gotta have a life, otherwise I'd be a zombie. I don't know how others do it. It's so time consuming to write the book, take care of my daughter, occasionally exercise, cook meals, periodically talk to my husband and go to work every day.
I have no life outside of those few tasks. Sometimes I think that's just not much of a life.
Except, every day I get book ideas. I get excited about the stories I want to write. It's a compulsion. I can't wait for others to read the stories and be entertained.
How sick is that?
My hope now is for the book to be done by the end of December. A mid-January release is now in the works.

Getting a Vampire Diaries surprise

I have been super sick for the past week requiring time off work, lots of time in bed, sipping tea and watching three seasons of the Vampire Diaries.

I was never tempted to watch the show. I read one of the L.J. Smith books and thought it was horrible. The Elena character was very unsympathetic and I did not follow the series.

I watched my first episode a week or two ago and was surprised at how good the show was. I chalk that up to Kevin Williamson's involvement. The book series gave them the idea and since I never read past the first book, I'm not sure how much the books have influenced the  television show.

I figure it's probably like True Blood. The television writers draw the characters from the books but don't follow the book plots too closely.

Anyway, I was happily impressed. It's probably not a good idea to watch 60 episodes in a week because after a while the story lines blend into each other and it seems that every other minute Elena is being kidnapped and Jeremy and Alaric are getting killed and coming back to life.

I hate to say this but I'm glad Klaus is still alive. He's the love to hate character. You love the evil thrills he provides but don't like him because he's evil.

I also like him because his negatives allowed Damon to humanize and he's a much more enjoyable character as a good/bad guy rather than just bad.

I did not enjoy Stefan's return to being the Ripper. It was just too gory for me and made it hard for me to see him as the gentle, bunny-blood loving soul as he started out. As a plot device, separating Elena and Stefan for almost an entire season gave the writers the opportunity to explore the Elena/Damon connection.

It's funny how movies and television can grow from pretty bad books. Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books aren't all bad but some of them are very poorly plotted and organized and have utterly silly stories that never made it to screen.

It's probably easier to come up with clever plot points with a team of writers. I did notice that Williamson and co-creator Julie Plec together wrote a slew of the scripts in season one. It was only in the later part of the season and into season two and three that other writers have appeared.

Then again, the stories in season two and three were more sophisticated and had more complex plots. At one point every episode ended on a cliff hanger (ala J.J. Abrams in Alias) and every attempt to isolate and kill Klaus was defeated.

This show has very good writing.